How mobile design is disrupting the modern workplace

25 November 2016

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How is mobile design disrupting the modern workplace? We spoke to Muhammad Umer Farooq, lead developer at Huddle, about his thoughts.

Do devices change to fit how we work or does the way we work change to fit our devices? Perhaps it’s a combination of the two, with new devices giving us the option to work the way we’ve always wanted to but never could. At the HP Continuum Accelerator event in September, we invited developers to come and discover new ways to bridge the gap between users and tech.

As lead developer at Huddle, a secure cloud-based collaboration software, Muhammad Umer Farooq lives and breathes cutting edge, user-centric tech every day. His unique perspective on how developers create tech every day gives us an insight into the chicken and egg scenario of user experience and devices. Check out some of his thoughts below:

The right device can change the world

“A device like x3 will definitely change the way people perceive mobility in their work. So far, everyone is accustomed to carrying multiple devices; mobile phone generally for quick replying to queries and emails to colleagues, and a laptop or similar device for actual productive work like writing documents or writing presentations.

“A device like x3 will definitely change the way people perceive mobility in their work.”Muhammad Umer Farooq

“It becomes really easy to carry one device and cover all of these different types of work on the go. So you can have same device connected to your mini docking station and you can write new documents, you can write new presentations, improve your presentation and then do your presentation. You don’t need to carry a laptop all the time.”

Mobility is leading device design and functionality

“Mobility is definitely the first thing I thought about when I was developing the app at Huddle. A lot of our users are not working in their offices. They’re just in the field, or travelling or just outside of the office. Some of our customers actually use huddle just on their travel devices.

“One of our users use Huddle specifically because they can take documents out of the office. That tells me that mobility is very important for our customers and that’s the reason the application that we develop at Huddle always has this in mind.

Remote working is the future

“In recent times I think the notion of remote working, in itself is a powerful thing. Earlier, people needed to be in their workplace, in order to do their work, which limits their productivity. If they wanted to go away to their customers, to maybe another country… to interact with their customers, you were disconnected from their work it was a hindrance for business people to be more productive.

“Mobile technology has bridged that gap quite efficiently, but mobiles on their own aren’t that effective. In all the different use cases, devices like the x3 solved that particular problem; you can just take your mobile device and you can pretty much be as productive as if you were in your office or working from home.

Interested in hearing more from our ‘Interviews with the Experts series’? Discover how the HP Elite x3 running Windows 10 is changing the face of work.